Well I'm absolutely delighted to say that for the past week, I have felt Tia's babies moving and it's such a big relief. I can't believe that in a weeks' time she will be giving birth, although knowing Tia, she is bound to go over by a day just to worry me. The time really has flown by and I guess that I'd better look at setting up a kitten box for her at some point during this week. On the weekend, I will be moving Tia into our bedroom to sleep of an evening although during the day she will be able to wander through the house wherever she chooses. She's put on yet more weight this past week and is starting to look a little uncomfortable and she is extremely heavy (I should know as I carry her around the house). I think she will be pleased when it's all over and she doesn't have this extra weight to lug around. Her appetite is still enormous and she continues to eat like there's no tomorrow. The back door to the cat run has been opened every day this week which has made Tia very happy because she loves spending time outdoors in the run. She even went into one of the little houses at the back of the run and started scratching around the bedding, obviously thinking it might be a good place to have her babies! The only real problem we have with her at the moment is that she's not happy with our other adults at the moment, apart from Cacao and Kahlua. She will curl up and sleep with both of them and spend time with them, but doesn't really like any of the others and she still growls at the Herbs if they venture too close to her. There will only be one more entry now in the pregnancy diary and that will be on March 22nd which is Tia Maria's due date.

I think the next 2 weeks will be extremely anxious one and keeping calm is not going to be easy. However, I really need to be very relaxed about this because any feelings I am having will be conveyed to Tia Maria. Our girl is doing rather well still and has that "smug" look on her face that most expecting mothers get. She is still continuing to "beg" food from anyone who happens to be eating something. It doesn't matter what it is, but if one of us is eating, she will sit at our feet, or on our desk, looking soulfully at us until we give in and give her some (which we inevitably do!). It it nice though to see her with such a good appetite. The only slight problem we had with her in the last week was that she had a 24 hour period where she was sick, throwing up throughout the day, which was rather a nightmare. However, it soon sorted itself out and she's back to normal now. I'm actually starting to get excited about her forthcoming babies and when she was on my lap the other evening I managed to feel a couple of them which was really nice. She's still not keen on our Herbs at all and continues to hiss and growl at them whenever they have the misfortune to be in the same vicinity as here. Fortunately, the Herbs don't care at all, they tend to give her a wide berth or just ignore her bad temper. At this point in time, Tia isn't letting her weight stop her jumping up on anything (like the fish tanks, or into my clothes shelves) and she's as active now, as she was prior to being pregnant. The only slight difference is that she is tending to sleep a little more now.

Yet another week safely gone by and another week I can cross off the calendar :) Tia's pregnancy is still going along really well. She's put on a little bit more weight now and tends to "sway" as she walks but still manages to look incredibly graceful. For the last week, Tia has been "visiting" me in the back room which is where I sit most of the day and also where the Herbs reside. This has surprised me a little because she's not particularly fond of Amaretto's babies, well if I'm truthful she actually doesn't like them at all and makes a point of growling at any of them who are unfortunate enough to get in her way. She has been sitting on my lap though for spells on and off throughout the day which is really nice. Dinner times for the family are still the same in the respect that she is still getting the "human food" that we are eating and is making a little piggy of herself. Her nipples are also even more enlarged now than they previous were and I think she feels that this is a good thing because for the first couple of weeks I was constantly picking her up and making sure the nipples were still pink and large. I don't have to bother now as I can see them as she walks around :) It would appear that Tia is going through a "jealousy" stage age the moment where the other cats are concerned. Ever since we've had Tia, she's always been a mummy's girl and she prefers me to anyone else in the house, in fact most of the time, she won't let a soul touch her apart from me. The only times that this is different is when she is pregnant because then she suddenly loves all the humans in the house. I've noticed recently though, that if Tia is with me and any of our other cats approaches, she growls at them and doesn't want them to come near me, almost as if she thinks she owns me exclusively. She was sitting on my lap on the lounge the other day and poor Amaretto came up for a cuddle and Tia growled at her and scared her so I ended up putting Tia down gently on the floor, picked Retto up and put her on my lap instead. Tia then got the hint and climbed back onto the lounge and sat as close to me as she possibly could. At the moment, the only cats in the house that she is happy to be near is Cacao and Kahlua.

We've now made it to Week 5 and I'm ecstatic that we've come this far, particularly as there was a time when we didn't think we'd get past week 3. Tia is doing so incredibly well, positively blooming in fact. She's starting to get quite a bit larger now but it still doesn't stop her playing fetch with her toy or tearing around the house. She does struggle a bit when it comes to jumping up on things now, not quite struggle, so much as she stops and thinks about it before attempting it, whereas normally, Tia is the most agile cat in the house. I do hope that this is merely due to her pregnancy and not because there is something wrong. I know that in years gone by, I'll re-read this diary and think how gloomy I sounded throughout the whole of her pregnancy however, I refuse to get overly excited about this because I know if anything goes wrong, I'm going to be absolutely gutted. Quite naturally, Tia is the only one not bothered about this at all. In fact, as soon as she sees me, she starts purring, and becomes even more affectionate that she normally is with me. I can say that she is milking her condition for all it's worth because I'm convinced that she knows how careful I am being with her and she has started to take liberties now. For example, when we have dinner of an evening, we put the cats/dogs in other parts of the house so that we can eat in peace, all except for Tia. Whereas she would just sleep on the lounge while we ate, she now sits on the floor between Graham's and my chair and looks up at us both thinking that we will give her some of whatever we are eating. Sure enough, both of us fall for it and next thing you know, she's having a lovely meal of OUR food! I don't know why I'm amazed at how easily our cats can wrap us around their little paws but they certainly do a good job of it. So I can now cross off yet another week and hopefully will be putting yet another progress report for Week 6. Goodness knows how I'm going to get through the next 4 weeks and keep my sanity!

I normally don't do a weekly pregnancy diary, however, each week that goes by where Tia is still pregnant is an absolute blessing. Tia's appetite is still incredibly good and she seems to have her head stuck in the food bowl quite regularly which I'm pleased to see. It's easy now to tell by looking at her that she's pregnant because already she is starting to become a lot rounder in all the right places. She's also quite heavy to pick up now. Her temperament isn't particularly wonderful as she continues to hiss at our current litter, the Herbs. To get to the cat run, she has to come through the kitten room and if she's tearing through, then it's perfectly fine, however if she's walking through, she looks towards the box, hisses or growls and then carries on her way. For the last couple of days she has been very active, too active for my liking actually and she spent this morning tearing through the house, out into the cat run, back into the house, jumping over the small kitten barrier and this went on for an hour. I actually went back and re-read Tia's previous pregnancy diaries to see if this "activity level" was apparent with either of her other 2 pregnancies. I was very relieved to see that in her 2nd pregnancy, around the 3 week stage, she was also very active, and was rather horrid to the babies we had in the house at the time. I am a bit worried that she's possibly thinking of coming into call which is why she's acting so loony and if that's the case, then she has obviously lost the babies. Hopefully though, in a week's time, I'll be putting our next entry in the diary to say that we have made it to week 5.

No one is more surprised than us when Tia Maria pinked up! During January, she had a lovely honeymoon with Ice and lots of matings took place, however, due to her previous problem with Pyometra and all the treatment she had, we truly didn't actually expect anything to happen. I had been looking at her nipples for the past 3 or 4 days as I knew that if she were pregnant, that was when she was due to pink however nothing had changed. Having said that though, for the week prior, her temperament had changed, she purred a lot more, and her appetite had increased. She also had become slightly heavier and her abdomen looked just that little bit more fuller. It was those signs that made me think it was possible she was pregnant. When she pinked up on February 9, we were overjoyed to say the least. The hardest part now will be making sure that Tia is kept as stress free as possible, and that's she's on an excellent diet and is monitored very closely. I'm going to find it very difficult to get through the next 6 weeks but we will be hoping and praying that nothing goes wrong. If all goes well, her babies will be due approximately March 22nd, 2005. This is such an important mating for us because we are planning to keep one, possibly two Tabby girls back from this litter for ourselves to add to our breeding program.